


Six.

by Neth_Smiley



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 12:19:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13998204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neth_Smiley/pseuds/Neth_Smiley
Summary: After killing his ex-boyfriend in self-defense, Jonathan is back at Will's house. Each chapter is centered around one of the six stages of grief.





	1. Shock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DestructiveEmpathy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestructiveEmpathy/gifts).



Jonathan’s dull-eyed all the way through questioning, voice soft and clouded over. He says his answers simply and clearly, no rambling, no stutter, no break, no realignment of words and sounds to make them more musical. He can’t seem to look straight at anybody, and as they step into the car, Jonathan settles into a clumsy silence. 

At Will’s, he walks to the bedroom, still quiet, and gets his box of special things--his stuffed toys, a notebook maybe, his anchor bracelet--then takes it outside and turns it over in his hands for a very long time. He rubs the silver anchor between his fingers, and slips it on when he finds no ruts in the shine. 

What’s there to talk about with Will? Poor Will. He needs time with his friends.

Jonathan is not a _friend_ , he is a Bad Boy, so he curls up with a blanket on the porch, where the night air is welcome. He hopes he gets malaria, it’d serve him right. 

Malaria does not come. Jonathan says hello to the dogs, but does not touch them much. Not even Bastien, who he’d been looking forward to petting again so much. 

Jonathan wants to hurt Will because he, Jonathan, hurts. He spends the next twenty minutes cowering on the patio furniture with his arms wrapped around his head so that Will can’t hear his thoughts or whatever he does to catch Bad Guys. Bad Guys like Jonathan. Jonathan killed a Good Guy, _an upstanding and valued member of our vibrant local community._ That’s what the obituary says in the paper.   
Jonathan is trying to remember the last time he felt _vibrant_ , and can’t.   
Not anymore.


	2. Anger

Hannibal must be coming any day now. Jonathan paces up and down the porch, still barefoot so as not to bother Will, and not in front of the windows, either. That leaves about four feet (1 meter long, 1/3 wide) he can pace in, so he paces. 

Hannibal needs to come take care of Will.

It wasn’t fair. Will already had Hannibal. It wasn’t _fair_. Hannibal had specially said that Jonathan belonged to Lex as long as Lex lived, and then Will had stolen Lex, too. Patches of dry skin on Jonathan’s hands have been gnawed to open cuts in his nervous anger, and he holds them limp and awkward in pain. Suddenly thinking of the insult _limp-wristed_ , he corrects his posture.

Continuing the laughable appearance, Jonathan hits his legs and hips with his thin, awkward fists, as hard as he dares so he won’t bother Will with the noise. Nobody looks at anything below your chest unless you’re swimming--if he raises bruises, it’ll be a secret.

It’s later in the day now, the sun glinting brittle and sharp off the snow. Today he stands in the clothes he wore in court, as though he is putting himself on trial. Jonathan’s taken to voicing both sides of an argument when he thinks Will can’t hear, standing in clumsy mimicries of both himself and Lex, jumping back and forth behind the chimney. 

“If I stay very quiet, Lex will come back home. If I am a good boy, Lex will come back home.” Jonathan says to himself, voice hissing, a junkie whine dropped a half-step.

“You had your chance, and you fucked it up. Same as you always do. Can’t you do anything right, for fuck’s sake? You try me, you really do. I try so hard with you, and you’re picky picky picky Johnny, never happy with what you have. Look at yourself. Look at ME.”

“But you hurt Will.”

“I wouldn’t have hurt ‘Will’ if you weren’t so lazy helping out. Maybe you just thought you saw ‘Will’. Did you ever stop and think that maybe it wasn’t your hero at all? Just something your fucked up mind came up with to make your disobedience more palatable? You made up all of it because you’re a liar. You lie all the time.” His voice is high and sharp, and he wants to claw himself into this world where he made all of it up, so it never happened.

It feels like Jonathan can’t be happy, can’t calm down. He wants to hurt something, Will maybe, definitely himself. It wasn’t fair that he had to make that choice! It was a stupid choice! Who would want to make a choice like that, anyways? 

He gets close to calling Mr. Crawford, with his big stupid bird face, and Freddy Lounds (a feat that required him stealing into the house to get close to Will’s phone--Jonathan can’t call her on his). Neither get called, though. 

In a day, his anger is over, and he merely curls up again when he thinks Will isn’t around, snuggles next to Bastien, and wails like a broken thing.


	3. Denial

_Dinnertime._ “I’m not hungry.”

_You’ll catch your death out there._ “I’m not cold.”

_Are you okay?_ “I’m fine.”

_I’m sorry._ “It’s okay.” 

Jonathan vows he will not be weak, will not cry, will not get confused. He tells himself that it’s letting Lex get the better of him if he gets upset. Jonathan will be a hard worker, and then the numb scared hurty feeling in his stomach and his chest and in his ( _stupid, clumsy_ ) hands will go away, just like the stories said it would. 

Will wakes up to Jonathan going over the couch with a dry toothbrush to get even the finest of dog hair removed. Finds him another day too, crouched in the bathroom battling grout stains with a wet scrub brush and a bucket, breathing hard and losing his temper when the tile won’t perfectly gleam.

Jonathan reminds himself that the only time he’s ever seen somebody get upset about killing somebody is on TV, with his least favorite soap opera character. She cried and whined and made her husband do all the chores and serve her breakfast in bed. 

( _Lex_ liked breakfast in bed)

Jonathan knows it takes a lot of dishes for breakfast in bed, and you get sweaty when you sit in your sheets too long. He’s not _stupid_. Will is very busy. Jonathan is determined to not be a brat, not hurt poor Will any more than he already does by living here. 

Maybe Will is sad and scared, or maybe he’s hurting. 

He must want Hannibal. Jonathan will not steal Hannibal away from Will, because _Will is happy, now, Hannibal **said**_ , and Jonathan is not a _thief_. Jonathan will not be _lazy_. Breakfast is a half cup of rice and a slice of fish, and it becomes a song, hissed through cleaning brushes and steel wool for scouring, crashing and hitting high, sharp notes in hot buckets of Mrs. Meyer’s Lemon Cleanse. 

Johnny will not be lazy. Johnny will not be lazy.

John-ny, Will-not-be, La-zy. 

_Johnny_   
_Will not be_   
_Lazy._

It’s not a haiku, like Hannibal would write, and he berates himself for not having done that, either. Hannibal would, though. 

Hannibal does everything Jonathan can’t. 

That means another punishment. He’ll find one, somehow.


	4. Bargaining/Depression

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Compressed these two stages into one chapter, because you can't bargain with somebody who's dead.

Jonathan cowers in the back of the room, listening to the executor read off the will. In the front of the room there are friends, coworkers, family, everyone that Lex knew or was close to. Fancy things, good things, things Jonathan knew powerful men owned, were passed out quickly, with an eye to what hadn’t been gathered by the state already as evidence. 

Jonathan is not given anything, and as soon as he can, he makes a hobble for it, thinking it must have been a message, must have been a sign. That’s it. That was always Lex’s way, since he was so very, very clever. Lex must have faked it somehow! He must have pretended to be dead, and he was just waiting to come back! Come back and take Jonathan away from Will, since Will and Hannibal were together. Maybe if Jonathan was very, very good, he could come back sometimes and see the dogs--not too often, just every now and then, for a treat. He wouldn’t mess up if he could see the dogs! They could just drive by and wave at them!

Sometimes Jonathan finds himself stroking his scars, pressing his fingers as deep as they can go. There’s probably a reason for that in what he calls Real Life, that the scar tissue is extensive, that its deep and regular openings in the past have made what is left easily stiff and pained. 

He doesn’t like that reason. A better reason would be that it’s caused by Lex’s pain, that every scar was another chance and he’s covered in them. If there were fewer, Lex would be happy again. He’d smile. Or just vanish away, forever and ever. Jonathan’s not sure what he wants, but he is certain Lex would know. Lex always knew everything. He even knew what Jonathan called Will in his head. 

_Hero._

He didn’t even tell Will that name, it was that secret. Just the dogs. _They_ knew.

He tries to avoid Will more than ever, but knows Will knows where he is. Will knows everything, too.

Jonathan decides to make paper cranes (like Hannibal told him about how in Japan folding 1,000 cranes would grant you a wish, he wishes so much for this to be over) but his hands keep fumbling, and he can barely fold a paper in half to make a birthday card, let alone a crane. Eventually, he remembers Lex mentioning writing lines, long-long ago, and starts to write what Lex told him he should write lines of.  
Jonathan writes till his hand cramps, massages it back into awkward life, keeps writing, counting each and every one of the lines as though it will get him closer to having not killed a man. 

_I shall not wail. I shall not wail. I shall not wail. I shall not wail._   
_I shall not wail. I shall not wail. I shall not wail. I shall not wail._   
_I shall not wail. I shall not wail. I shall not wail. I shall not wail. I shall not_

Hannibal has not come. 

Lex has not come. He is most assuredly dead, and Jonathan will have to work hard to find him another way.

In the bathroom, Jonathan bites and chews at his fingers, peeling the skin away with his teeth till the blood and pain makes the room shiny as strange whorling shapes move in front of him, and squeezes his hand so that a few drops of blood go down the sink drain.

“I gotta finna chickennor something.” he murmurs, bent over the sink to listen for the voices of the dead, for his Lex. “M’sorry.” 

The silence goes on for fifty minutes, and Jonathan feels dizzy from having his head in the sink all that time, nauseous from the memories that the trapped feeling brings up.

Lex will never come back, and Jonathan is alone.


End file.
